by Virna DePaul
Exiting the elevator and stepping into the corridor, Cara looked right and left. The coast was clear. She strode quickly down the hall, still bundled up and feeling uncomfortably hot. She tensed all over when she saw the back of Mike Gaunt’s bristled head and the thick shoulders under his wrinkled white shirt. He did look like an FBI agent. On steroids. It occurred to her that Branden had never really answered her question on that score.
Gaunt was in the bullpen, leaning over Jackson Riley, a junior stockbroker, and jabbing a meaty finger at the computer screen as Jackson nodded seriously. Next to them stood Frank, one of the employees Branden had brought in. Cara felt herself go pale. She squinted, trying to see what was on the display, then figured it couldn’t be her if those two looked so businesslike. She scuttled past the spot where the office manager would see her if he turned, finally reaching the relative safety of her office.
Coat off, purse stashed, she did a home-run dash to her swivel chair and touched a key, dreading what would pop up in her email. Thankfully, there were no further booby traps waiting for her.
She got busy. Really busy. Excel spreadsheets had never looked so good. Routine was what she needed to stop the roller coaster of emotions that she had been riding since the night she’d locked lips with Wall Street’s Most Desired.
The morning passed quickly and without incident. Around noon she suddenly realized that she was so hungry it felt like her stomach was beginning to turn on itself. She dug through her desk, hoping that she had a granola bar or a bag of trail mix, but having no luck. Knowing that she couldn’t hide forever, she took her wallet and headed down to the employee dining room. She would just grab a sandwich and bring it back up. She had plenty of bottled water in the office.
Feeling like a criminal, she checked the hallway before stepping out. No Branden, no Mike Gaunt, and no Deena. So far so good. She pressed the down button on the elevator. When it slid open, she was face to face with Greg.
He smiled broadly and said, “Hey there,” in a sickeningly familiar tone.
“Hi,” she answered grudgingly.
He held the door open but didn’t step off. Greg raked his gaze over her. “What’s up with the weird blouse and the giant pussycat bow? You look like a high school teacher who doesn’t want to get the boys turned on. Unless you’re covering up a hickey.”
Cara cleared her throat. “Aren’t you getting off here?” she asked before she stepped on.
“No, I just remembered that I forgot something downstairs. Which floor do you need?” he asked her.
“Ground,” she said.
What is he up to?
He smiled again, and this time it almost seemed menacing. A week ago she couldn’t have imagined Greg frightening her, but there was something different about him now. Maybe he was using a little too many of those “pick me up” pills.
“I’m glad I ran into you, actually. You know, Cara,” he said after the elevator once again jerked to life, “I really had no intention of leaving you out on the island the other night. I just couldn’t find you. I thought for sure you had left me.”
“So is that supposed to be an apology? It sounds more like you’re laying blame.”
“I guess it’s an apology if that’s what you want to call it,” he said.
“I don’t want to call it anything,” she said, in no mood for silly word games. “I just thought since you’d never actually apologized for abandoning me that night maybe that’s what you were trying to do now.” She knew in the back of her mind that it wasn’t really his fault, but his attitude irked her.
“I didn’t do it on purpose. If you had been around like a date was supposed to be, I would have been able to find you. But you weren’t, so I don’t feel the need to apologize. Besides, judging from the pic in the Gawker, you were doing okay after I left, getting to know the new boss.”
Cara felt her stomach drop just as the elevator lurched to a stop and the doors slid open. Greg put his hand out to hold the doors open after he stepped off and grinned at her shocked face like they’d been having a pleasant conversation. Then he said, “Have a great day. I’m sure you’ll have a great night. I know I will. I’ve got a hot video to watch.”
He let the doors go and she stood there, mouth probably hanging open for too long, even after the doors closed in her face. It took her another several seconds of standing there looking at the closed doors to remember that she needed to push something to make it open again or go.
Instead of reopening the doors she pushed the up button. Was it possible Branden had been right about Greg after all?
—
“Where are you going?”
Branden sat quietly behind his desk as Cara described her conversation with Greg in the elevator. Then, without a word, he stood and headed toward the office door.
“I’m going to talk to Greg,” he said. “If nothing else, to tell him to keep his nasty insinuations to himself.”
Cara immediately stepped between him and the door. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
The closeness of their bodies registered and goose bumps prickled down Cara’s arms and spine. She forced down the urge to go up on her toes and once again feel the softness and power of his sexy lips on hers.
He looked down at her with those smoldering dark eyes. “Why not?”
“If he wanted attention, you’d be giving him exactly that. If he’s not the one who posted the picture and video, and he just came across them the way we did, then bringing them up gives credence and unnecessary influence.”
He was still looking down at her face. Her mouth had gone completely dry and she felt like she needed to swallow but couldn’t. His eyes were shifting back and forth between her eyes and her lips.
He was thinking of kissing her.
A second after she thought it, he pushed her up against his closed office door and his lips were suddenly on hers.
She could have pulled away. She could have at least tried.
She didn’t.
Instead, wanting only to forget her worries over that video and the humiliation she’d felt at Greg’s jeering voice and expression, she molded herself into his body and deepened the kiss, shuddering as she felt his hot tongue slip between her lips.
Her mind told her to stop. After all, this is what had gotten them into trouble in the first place. But his lips on hers felt too good, too right to stop.
As they kissed, he ran his hands along her curves and she couldn’t help but moan against his mouth. His touch was electric, and the fact that they were leaning up against the door of his office with his assistant sitting only feet away outside made it more dangerous somehow and therefore more exciting.
He pulled his lips from hers only to slide them down her face and to her neck. When he reached the bow, his hand lifted, tugging it open and exposing a tender patch of flesh to kiss and nibble. The part of her brain telling her to stop began to scream.
She tried to ignore it. Tried to listen to her body, which was commanding just the opposite.
She was rooting for her body. She wanted it to win.
But before she realized it, her brain took control and she said, “No, wait. Stop…”
To his credit, he did. Immediately. Her body was thrown into instant grief and regret.
“Cara,” he breathed.
The sound of her name on his lips was like a drug. She had to force herself to be strong.
“We can’t do this.”
“Why not?” he said in his deep, sexy voice. “I tried to fight this. Tried to do what was appropriate. But Greg saw the video, and it’s certain others will have, too, either because Greg told them about it or they found it on their own. All they had to do was Google my name, or D&M, and given I just took over the company, that isn’t farfetched. People will already think we’re sleeping together. I’m sorry for that. Sorry for the trouble it will cause you. But you already know your job is safe. There’s nothing standing in our way from dating. Besides helping you through any b
acklash with the video, I’d like to get to know you better, Cara. Dinner. Drinks. Conversation.”
Her gaze locked on to his. That was no “I’d like to talk politics over dinner” look he was giving her. That was one of those smoldering “Let’s shove the meal off the table and have at each other” kind of looks. Everything inside her began to shiver and quake. “Please…” she said, not positive what she was asking for.
“Please what, Cara?”
“Please stop looking at me like that.” It wasn’t what she really wanted to say. What she really wanted to say was, please throw me down on the desk and fuck me senseless.
He slowly pulled away. Shivering, as if the loss of his touch had chilled her all the way to her bones, she fixed the bow of her blouse with trembling fingers. Then she turned to open the door.
“Wait,” he said.
She froze. Looked over her shoulder.
He strode to his desk and bent over it.
She imagined that she was lying on top of it, legs spread…
Branden wrote something down. When he came back he had a business card in his hand. “I meant what I said when I told you I wanted to get to know you. To have dinner with you. I’m dining at home tonight. At seven. Give this to my doorman. Tell him your name and he’ll send you up,” he said.
She looked at the card. He’d written P on it and signed it. At the bottom it said Manhattan Sky Towers.
“I didn’t agree to dinner,” she said.
He closed her hand around the card with his own. His touch caused her to convulse once more. She wasn’t sure if she liked or hated that he had such a strong effect on her.
“In case you change your mind,” he said, “I’ll be there by seven. If dinner’s too much, just join me for a cocktail or two. In the meantime, I won’t talk to Greg, but I am going to keep an eye on him. If he bothers you again, let me know.”
She nodded, unable to formulate any words.
He reached out and smoothed down a piece of her hair. That simple act was so sweet and intimate that Cara actually felt the sting of tears in the corners of her eyes. She didn’t understand why he had such an incredibly strong effect on her emotions and it made her a nervous wreck. After he pulled away, he smiled and opened the office door.
“Thank you for letting me know about that, Cara. I hadn’t realized that venture was losing money. I’ll have to keep a closer eye on those stocks.”
“Oh, um…sure, Mr. Duke. You’re welcome.” She made eye contact with Jean and smiled.
Jean smiled back.
Cara was probably just being paranoid, but there seemed to be something new in the other woman’s eyes, something knowing.
Cara made it back to her office, completely forgetting that she’d left in the first place because she was hungry. Her insides were quaking from that kiss. At least she thought it was the kiss. Maybe it was what Greg had said, or the look Jean had given her. Either way, she needed to shake it all off before her work started to suffer. Her job was the one stable thing she had in her life and she needed it.
Her mother and Glenn were counting on her.
She looked down at the business card in her hand and then shoved it into her pocket.
They were in enough trouble as it was.
She wasn’t going to his place for dinner. Because she knew from how he looked at her what would follow dessert.
But there was no denying the fact she wanted to be what was laid out on his table for his pleasure.
—
After Cara left, Branden returned to his desk and picked up the phone.
“Alex, I need to see you,” was all he said.
Less than five minutes later, there was a knock on his door.
“Come in!”
Alex Samuels, Branden’s friend and personal investigator, stepped inside. Branden had asked him to be part of the D&M purchase, mostly to keep his ear to the ground and report to Branden anything he heard that could be construed as negative.
“Hey, boss,” Alex said, taking a seat across from Branden.
Branden and Alex had met in college over a wild game of Beer Pong and forged a friendship that had survived everything in between—including more Beer Pong and the occasional hostile takeover of a trading company. Now Alex and his brother Lee were Branden’s go-to guys for anything or anyone he needed checked out. They worked for him, not for the SEC, not for Deena, and not for Mike Gaunt. After seeing the photo on Gawker, Branden had told Lee to investigate Cara’s background on the chance someone from her past was gunning for her. Now, because of Greg’s comments to Cara in the elevator, Branden had an assignment for Alex.
“Hey,” Branden said, looking his friend over. “Off to play polo with Ralph Lauren?”
Alex, usually a jeans, T-shirt, and boots kind of guy, currently had on a collared shirt, a long-sleeved peachy-pink button-down, and khaki pants.
“Did you call me up here just to make fun of me?”
Branden grinned. “Nope. I have an assignment for you. But I am wondering what prompted your sudden change of style.”
“Are you kidding? My first day here in your fancy trading firm I had not one but two different people mistake me for the plumber. Apparently there was an issue with the toilets on the second floor that day.”
“So you went shopping so you wouldn’t be mistaken for the custodial staff?”
“Yeah, Leslie took me to Barneys. Not exactly my style, but at least nobody’s asking me if they can pee on floor two today.”
Branden wondered if Alex had called Leslie, or the other way around. Leslie was one of Branden’s five sisters—younger than him by eight years—and had followed him and his friends around like a lost little puppy. Branden had gotten into a fistfight with Leslie’s father, stepfather number three, when the douchebag had taken a belt to Leslie’s behind after she’d snuck out of the house at night. Alex and Leslie had been friends since they’d met a few years back. Branden couldn’t remember if Leslie was dating anyone at the moment.
But the hair on the back of his neck rose at the thought of his baby sister dating anyone—even if it was one of his best friends. Although she couldn’t do better than Alex. The Samuels brothers were the salt of the earth. Trustworthy. Hard workers. And they’d make great husbands. Unlike him.
Branden sighed and told himself to focus on the matter at hand. “I need you on this quickly. It has nothing to do with the SEC investigation—at least, not that I know of. But who knows…”
“Cool, so this is personal. Is she hot?”
“It’s a guy.”
“Why don’t you ever need some hot, lonely cougar type followed? Or better yet, assign me instead of my brother to look into the hot blonde. I was a little hurt over that, by the way.”
Something warm stirred in his belly at the mention of Cara. Damn. She seemed to invade his every pore. “You weren’t here the day I called for the background on Cara. Lee got that one by default.”
“Fine. No hot blondes. What do you need?”
“There’s a guy named Greg Johnson. A junior stockbroker, rather obnoxious. I want to know everything about him, including how old he was when he stopped wearing Pull-Ups to bed at night.”
“So info you can’t get off his employee file. That’s it?”
“For now,” Branden said. “As soon as Deena gets all the hard drives downloaded and we go through them, I know there will be more. Do you and Lee have the staff and resources you need?”
“We have way too many people at the moment, actually. Got them sitting around watching security tapes and picking their noses all day. It looks like a family dinner at my parents’ house.”
“That will change soon enough. Get on Greg Johnson ASAP for now. Let me know if you find anything unusual in the guy’s background.”
Alex stood up. “You got it, boss. Just remember me if any of those cougar investigations come up, okay?”
“Why don’t you just go out to the club and find one yourself?”
“You know
I’m shy,” Alex said with a grin on his way out.
Yeah, right. Or maybe he was too busy going shopping with the woman he really wanted. Branden shook his head and was still smiling when Deena walked in the door.
“You look happy,” his stepsister said, taking her perch on the edge of the black sofa.
“Should I not?” he asked, withholding his guess that Alex might be dating their little sister. Sometimes Deena was even more protective of her siblings than Branden was, and he figured Leslie and Alex deserved the benefit of the doubt…for now.
“I’m not sure yet. I got the hard copy from an employee’s hard drive today. It has some interesting searches on it for information about Serenity and Lindtz Pharmaceuticals.”
Serenity was a new medication put out by a little-known pharmaceutical company, Lindtz. As soon as the medication had been approved by the FDA and hit the market, the stocks for the little company had skyrocketed. Anyone who had gotten in on the ground floor of that deal had made a small fortune.
“Who’s the employee?” he asked.
“A guy named John Turner. He’s been here for ten years.”
“Did we look into his financials?”
“He’s made several cash deposits recently. All just under ten grand, I’m assuming to keep the IRS at bay. He doesn’t own any of the stock for Lindtz, but it seems that he has two brothers, an uncle, and a cousin that acquired quite a bit of it just prior to Serenity being released onto the market.”
“Then John Turner is someone we need to be looking at more closely. Mike can handle it.”
“Not Alex? I just saw him leaving here. Anything I should know?”
She already knew about the Gawker picture and the shady video, and he thought about telling her about Cara’s run-in with Greg, but for some reason that seemed wrong. Like he’d be betraying Cara somehow by sharing. “Nope.”
